News & Links

? Findings overturn earlier research on working mothers
? Gains of being in employment outweigh disadvantages

A ground-breaking study has found that mothers can go back to work months after the birth of their child without the baby's wellbeing suffering as a result.

By assessing the total impact on a child of the mother going out to work, including factors outside the home, American academics claim to have produced the first full picture of the effect of maternal employment on child cognitive and social development. Their conclusion will provide comfort for thousands of women who re-enter the employment market within a year of giving birth.

"The good news is that we can see no adverse effects," said American academic Jane Waldfogel, currently a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. "This research is unique because the question we have always asked in the past has been: 'If everything else remains constant, what is the effect of a mum going off to work?' But of course everything else doesn't stay constant, so it's an artificial way of looking at things.

"Family relationships, family income, the mental health of the mother all change when a mother is working and so what we did was to look at the full impact, taking all of these things into account."

In one of the most fraught areas of social policy and research, several studies over the past two decades have suggested that children do worse if their mothers go back to work in the first year of their lives.

Recent research by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University found that children of mothers who went back to work within the first three years were slower learners, and a 2008 Unicef study recommended that mothers stay at home for the first 12 months or "gamble" with their children's development. The Pew Research Centre in Washington found high levels of anxiety among women over the issue.

The new study, led by New York's Columbia University School of Social Work, was published last week by the Society for Research in Child Development. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care followed more than 1,000 children from 10 geographic areas aged up to seven, tracking their development and family characteristics.

It found that, while there are downsides to mothers taking work during their child's first year, there were also significant advantages ? an increase in mothers' income and wellbeing, and a greater likelihood that children receive high-quality childcare. Taking everything into account, the researchers said, the net effect was neutral.

"The effect of the parenting itself is the key factor," said Waldfogel. "It is hugely important how sensitive you are to your child's needs. Even for women who have to work more than 30 hours a week, they can make things better for themselves, they just need to take a deep breath on the doorstep, dump all the office worries behind them and go in the door prepared to pay attention to all their children's cues. This is good news for all mothers.

"I'm actually delighted to have been able to disprove earlier studies. We just had to ask some different questions and this approach of looking at the whole picture is definitely the right question to be looking at.

"This is especially good news for US mothers, who typically go back to work after three months because of the lack of maternity leave, but it equally will apply to the typical British family."

Waldfogel added that part-time work, up to 30 hours a week, provides more desirable outcomes than full-time employment. The authors attribute their striking findings to the rich data used in the study, detailing parent-child interactions, income and childcare. They also used an analytic method that allowed them to calculate the total effect of maternal employment taking into account all knock-on effects.

Parents and campaigners welcomed the findings. Siobhan Freegard, co-founder of the parenting website Netmums, said the results would be embraced by every working mother, and pointed out that many women had no choice but to work and their attitude was often "we are doing our best".

Sally Gimson, director of communications at the Family and Parenting Institute, said the quality of childcare was crucial. "Women should not feel guilty whatever choices they make ? and that does not mean you have to make the choice to work. Often it is the more well-off women who have the choice, while many others have to work," Gimson said.

Sam Willoughby, 37, wanted to go back to her job at a financial services company part-time after having her daughter, Alice. "But they were incredibly inflexible," she said. She decided not to return and now runsmumandworking.co.uk, which aims to help mothers find flexible options, both full- and part-time. "So many things make working mothers feel awful, but the reality is, as this study shows, that going back to work is acceptable.

"There is a notion that mothers should spend all their time with their children but that is wrong. You need to also do things that are just for you. And a career can give you that."

Julie Wilson, 43, returned to work full time when her first son, James, was six months old. "We had a really good nursery nearby and it was absolutely fine. I really enjoyed my job and never considered changing my hours. I don't feel he missed me ? he was happy at nursery. He was occupied all the time? Later on it was really educational."

When her second son, Ben, was born, she returned to work again, but went part-time. Wilson, who now works as a freelance, thinks the decision to work had no negative impact on the boys, now 12 and eight. "Looking at James now, he is a very rounded individual."

Yousaf Raza Gilani's comments follow cancellation of trip to Britain by Pakistan's spy chief

Pakistan's prime minister hit back today at remarks by David Cameron linking the country to the export of terrorism.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, the normally conciliatory premier, used a speech to make the highest level response from Islamabad so far to Cameron's comments during his trip to India. Reports suggest that an official from the British high commission in Islamabad, possibly the deputy chief of mission, will be summoned tomorrow by Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs for a formal dressing down.

Gilani's intervention follows the abrupt cancellation by Pakistan's spy chief, General Shuja Pasha, of a planned visit to the UK for talks with his British counter-terrorism counterparts.

Co-operation from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, headed by Pasha ? which was accused of aiding the Taliban in the Afghan war logs published last week by WikiLeaks ? had previously been presented as being crucial to stopping numerous terrorist plots aimed against Britain.

There are fears that a long-planned visit to the UK this week by Pakistan's president, Asif Zardari, could be overshadowed by growing anger at Cameron's remarks among the one million people of Pakistani origin living in Britain. Media outlets and opposition politicians in Pakistan are urging the president to cancel the trip, while demonstrators burnt an effigy of the prime minister on the streets of Karachi.

There is particular anger, shown by Pakistanis yesterday in burning an effigy of the prime minister, that Cameron made the comments on a trip to India.

Gilani focused on the issue in today's speech in Punjab province. "In India, he [Cameron] has given a statement that we in Pakistan promote terrorism," he said. "We want to say to him, we've had good relations with you for 60 years."

He contrasted the issue raised by Cameron with the situation in Kashmir, the Himalayan region mostly held by India, which has been in open rebellion for 20 years. "In India, you [Cameron] talk about terrorism but you don't say anything about Kashmir. You forgot about the human rights abuses going on there. You should have spoken about that too, so that we in Pakistan would have been satisfied."

While Pakistan has frequently been asked to do more in the battle against extremists, Cameron's remarks are seen in Pakistan as going further than any western leader in criticising the country's record and commitment.

An editorial in Dawn, Pakistan's leading English-language daily, said: "No one, with the exception perhaps of New Delhi and Kabul, had ever accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism. In doing so, was Mr Cameron attempting to bracket Pakistan with countries that have been or still are anathema to the west?"

An officer at the ISI said: "Do you make such remarks when visiting a third country, a country we consider an enemy? It was done to appease [India]. You can sit in England and say what you want, but sitting in India gives it a completely different connotation."

A senior Pakistani civilian official said: "Cameron's remarks show a political immaturity, lack of foreign policy experience ? and talk about a choosing a bad venue to deliver the message. Being the youngest British prime minister in two centuries isn't necessarily an advantage."

The Cameron intervention came as Pakistan was reeling from the disclosures in the US intelligence documents made public by WikiLeaks. The apparent evidence of ISI collusion with the Taliban from the WikiLeaks material had already been seized on with glee by Indian officials, as confirmation of New Delhi's charge that the Pakistani state sponsors terrorism.

The shadow foreign secretary, David Miliband, said: "Diplomacy is about making friends and influencing them. Today's announcement by the ISI sadly proves that Cameron has failed to make friends and failed to influence them. We need to support Pakistan's intelligence services, not undermine them ? their work protects the people of Britain as well as the people of Pakistan. We have a strong Pakistani community in Britain and we have troops in Afghanistan ? the stakes are simply too high to go hunting headlines with thoughtless remarks.

"We need a prime minister that understands the complexity of diplomacy and so far Cameron has failed to prove himself as the standard-bearer we need around the world."

Travel expert Riaz Dooley, who has worked to encourage British Asians to take a greater interest in political life, warned that Cameron risked alienating British-Pakistanis. He said: "David Cameron is going to lose the Pakistani vote over this, because he has not apologised. It is not fair to say that Pakistan promotes the export of terrorism, he doesn't have any proof."

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood agreed that the Pakistani community in the UK was angry about Cameron's comments. He said the prime minister had failed to reflect how much the country had sacrificed in the war on terror. "They have taken a huge amount of casualties in the north-west province and there have been a huge number of bombings in Pakistan.

"They have suffered enormously in terms of their own people's lives and to suggest this counts for nothing is very, very insensitive."

Julian Assange defends the whistleblowers' website after its publication of 75,000 leaked files of US army secrets

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out at the US military, saying that it bears the ultimate responsibility for any deaths of Afghan informers in the wake of the publication by his organisation of 75,000 leaked files of American army secrets.

Assange and WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website that publishes leaked documents from around the world, have come under increasing fire amid accusations that publishing the files put people's lives at risk. But in an interview with the Observer, Assange said the blame for any deaths lay squarely with US military authorities.

"We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources and have a perfect record from our activities," he said.

WikiLeaks has been accused of disclosing the names of Afghan collaborators who may now be subject to reprisals. Critics also say that the information it published is unchecked and some of it may be of dubious provenance. But Assange responded to those claims by saying: "This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan? It's the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers."

Assange insisted there was no evidence that anyone had been put at risk and that WikiLeaks had held sensitive information back and taken great care not to put people at risk. "Well, anything might happen, but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen? In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged."

However, he did concede that, if it was proven someone had been killed or injured because of the leak, then WikiLeaks would consider changing the way it operates. "We will review our procedures," he said. But that is unlikely to defuse the growing international row. Last week the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, branded Assange "irresponsible". The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said he might have "blood on his hands".

At the same time US authorities are broadening their investigation into how the leak happened. The suspected leaker, Private Bradley Manning, is in custody. He has already been charged with passing on a video shot in Iraq of a US helicopter attack and 150,000 classified diplomatic cables. He is also the main suspect in the Afghan "war logs" leak. Now, according to a report in the New York Times, investigators are probing whether Manning acted alone or with others. The focus of the inquiry was on a group of people in Cambridge, near Boston in Massachusetts, who might prove to be the link between Manning and WikiLeaks.

Assange said he was undeterred by the attacks, and that traditional journalism had vacated a space into which WikiLeaks was stepping. "We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself," he said.

Stability and an economic boom have made the president the overwhelming favourite to be re-elected next week, but the opposition has been brutally silenced

It's a hot afternoon in the southern rural district of Nyaruguru. On a dusty clearing overlooked by a hill already swarming with people, tens of thousands of supporters have been gathering since early morning to get a glimpse of their hero. Among them are peasants, pregnant women and toddlers, all wearing the red-white-and-blue T-shirts of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and dancing to the rhythm of a famous local singer, Masamba Intore. Suddenly a convoy of black cars appears in the distance. The crowd explodes in cheers of joy when a tall, slender figure slowly makes his way to the podium. Ready for another mass celebration of his uncontested rule of this small African country, the president of Rwanda and former liberation fighter, Paul Kagame, finally appears, greeting his supporters.

Triumphal rallies like this one are becoming a daily routine in the presidential campaign of the Rwandan strongman. On 9 August the RPF leader will seek another seven-year mandate in an election widely seen as a formality. With a huge budget advantage over his three opponents, Kagame is expected to win as smoothly as in 2003, when he gained more than 95% of the votes. The only female among the contestants, Alvera Mukabaramba, has already accepted the inevitable defeat. "Beating Kagame is almost impossible," she acknowledges. "He has done so well for this country, rebuilding it from scratch after putting an end to the bloodiest page in our history."

Sixteen years after the genocide, the fates of Rwanda and the RPF are still deeply connected. The party is credited with having stopped the 1994 massacres in which 800,000 Tutsi were killed by the paramilitary Hutu militias and the former Rwandan army. It has ruled the country since then, constantly strengthening its grip on the society thanks to a policy based on development, order and transparency. But a series of recent disturbing events have highlighted what the RPF might not yet be ready to promote: democracy.

In recent weeks human rights organisations have repeatedly accused the government of dirty tactics and attempts to silence the media and prevent political opponents from competing in the elections. Victoire Ingabire, a politician who recently asked for an acknowledgment of the Hutu sufferings during the genocide, is now under house arrest, charged with denialism, genocide ideology and links with the FDLR, a rebel group based in nearby Congo and made up of former génocidaire troops.

Umuseso and Umuvugizi, two of the main Rwandan tabloids, have been banned for six months for "inciting public disorder" which will prevent them from covering the elections.

At the end of June Umuvugizi's editor, Jean-Leonard Rugambage, was killed in front of his home in Kigali, the capital, by two gunmen. Rwandan general Kayumba Nyamwasa, who had fled the country after an alleged falling out with Kagame, almost succumbed to the same fate when he was shot and seriously wounded in Johannesburg.

"At the beginning we were willing to start a political process. But it seems we are now simply negotiating to save our lives," said Frank Habineza, a former member of the RPF and now the leader of the Democratic Green party of Rwanda. One of the opposition parties that have mushroomed in the past year, the Greens cannot participate properly in the August elections because of police bans on its meetings. On 14 July, the party's deputy president, André Kagwa Rwisereka, was found dead on a river bank close to the border with Burundi, his head almost completely removed from his body. According to Habineza, the two men arrested in connection with the killing were released after a few days in custody. "Kagame is a soldier who never finished the war and never gave up military methods," he says. "He sees criticism as an open threat to his rule".

While Rwandan authorities have denied any role in the killings, RPF insiders concede that the recent bans are suspicious. They might betray the worries of a party afraid to lose control of a society still deemed politically immature after the traumas of genocide. The RPF policy of cancelling Hutu and Tutsi identities and embracing everyone as a Rwandan is widely thought to be working, but will take time. "If allowed to act without restraint, people would still vote along ethnic lines and Hutus would regain power, something we are not ready to accept now," admits a local RPF member who wished to remain anonymous. "Rwandans are voting for Kagame because they don't want problems, but the society remains tense."

Loyal to its president's credo that democracy is an empty box if people are not provided with food and basic services, and conscious that a former Tutsi rebel group cannot yet have a lasting base in a country where 85% of the people are Hutu, the RPF are betting on improving the living conditions of the people, hoping that this will do enough to silence opposition inside the country.

Rwanda is certainly developing fast. "Today everyone here can enjoy free primary education and health insurance," explains Jean Paul Uwizihiwe, a GP in Kigali. "The government even subsidises free anti-retroviral medication for HIV-positive patients. This means that people who would die in almost any other African country can live a normal life."

Rwanda's economy has boomed thanks to foreign investors. Roads and new infrastructure have boosted exports and tourism, while poor rural areas have benefited from loans given to co-operatives and aid programmes including "one cow per family" .

"Efficiency and delivery" are the motto of a political party born and bred according to the military discipline of its leader. Corruption is rare and poorly performing officials are quickly removed from their offices. As a result, Rwanda is one of the few countries where the public sector is more efficient than private industry.

"As in China, democracy will come naturally with the economic empowerment of the people," explains John Rwangombwa, the minister of finance and economic planning. "Our society is still fragile. We can't allow a total freedom of expression when some politicians and part of the society are ready to use the racial card to achieve power."

According to a prominent member of the opposition who asked to remain anonymous, the RPF reasoning has a point. When asked about choosing between Kagame and Ingabire for president, he replies without hesitation. "I would choose Kagame. Ingabire is clean, but she is still supported by scary people linked to the previous regime. They have a bad agenda. They still have the old Rwandan flag in their office. I'm proud to wear the new one."

The shortcomings of the opposition are undeniable, but RPF critics still argue that the party's attitude is making things worse, preventing people from speaking about problems that are bound to resurface. For all the economic development guaranteed by the RPF, the unresolved questions of this country's troubled past still cast a shadow over the future of Rwandans. Many acknowledge that relations between Hutus and Tutsis are slowly improving but remain difficult. They can go out to drink beers and speak about women, cars and football, but some subjects remain taboo, genocide among them.

"Rwandans never tell you what is in the heart," explains Sylvestre Mupenzi, an artist. "We always say that everything is OK, but in reality we are scared and wary. We can't trust each other."

While Tutsis remain understandably bitter towards the perpetrators of genocide, Hutus think it is time to address the killings carried out against them during the civil war that followed the ethnic cleansing.

As a consequence of this endless cycle of guilt, fear and resentment, there remain two paramount needs: peace and security, things that the Kagame administration has provided. But when asked if this country may then need an "enlightened dictator" to solve its problems and continue on the road to recovery, Habineza rejects the option. "It has worked in the first years after the genocide," he admits. "But in the long run, development is not sustainable without democracy."

Chancellor Angela Merkel attends service at church in western city of Duisburg, where music festival crush killed 21 people

A memorial service has been held in Germany for the 21 people crushed to death at the Love Parade techno music festival last weekend.

Hundreds of mourners, including the chancellor, Angela Merkel, attended a service of commemoration at Salvator church. Thousands more watched live coverage of the service on screens at a football stadium and a dozen other churches in the western city of Duisburg. Several TV stations also covered the service, and flags across the country flew at half mast.

The ceremony was led by Roman Catholic and Lutheran Protestant clerics representing Germany's two main denominations.

"The Love Parade was danced to death," Nikolaus Schneider, the head of the Rhineland Lutheran church assembly, said in his sermon. "In the middle of a celebration of lust for life, death showed its ugly face to all of us."

Franz-Josef Overbeck, the Catholic bishop of the neighbouring city of Essen, said: "Life can be so oppositional: one moment there is a party, the next moment we are lying helplessly on the ground.

"We want to stir up our life in secure ways, but don't have it under control."

After the sermons, a group of rescue workers who helped save people crushed in the crowded tunnel that was the sole entrance to the festival grounds in the city, lit 21 candles for the victims.

Anger about the incident, in which 500 people were injured, has been building in Duisburg in recent days with more than 250 people demanding the resignation of the city's mayor, Adolf Sauerland, at a protest on Thursday.

Many blame Sauerland and the city's authorities for failing to plan adequately for the event, which attracted an estimated 1.4 million people. Safety experts say the event was held on too small a site and criticised the organisers for providing only one entrance.

Revellers at the festival packed into a tunnel that was 100 metres long and 16 metres wide after police closed the grounds owing to overcrowding.

It quickly became hot and airless, and scores of people inside collapsed. Others fell an estimated nine metres from a ladder as they were trying to find another route out of the grounds. At least 10 people had to be resuscitated. Medical staff on the scene said many people had died from asphyxiation and back injuries.

The 21 people who died were aged 18 to 38, and included revellers from Spain, Australia, Italy, Bosnia, China and Holland as well as Germans.

A preliminary report by police investigators, published on Wednesday, accused the festival's organisers of major security breaches that may have led to the crush. But the report was criticised for failing to establish the responsibility of the city's authorities.

Safety experts had warned that the 230,000 square metres of party grounds, on the site of a disused railway depot on the outskirts of the Ruhr valley city, were large enough to hold only up to 500,000 revellers ? a third of the number who actually turned up for the event.

The Love Parade, first held in Berlin in 1989, has attained a cult status around the world and spawned scores of copycat events from Leeds to Rio de Janeiro. But the head organiser, Rainer Schaller, has announced the discontinuation of the event after the tragic incident.

Yousaf Raza Gilani's comments follow cancellation of trip to Britain by Pakistan's spy chief

Pakistan's prime minister hit back today at remarks by David Cameron linking the country to the export of terrorism.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, the normally conciliatory premier, used a speech to make the highest level response from Islamabad so far to Cameron's comments during his trip to India. Reports suggest that an official from the British high commission in Islamabad, possibly the deputy chief of mission, will be summoned tomorrow by Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs for a formal dressing down.

Gilani's intervention follows the abrupt cancellation by Pakistan's spy chief, General Shuja Pasha, of a planned visit to the UK for talks with his British counter-terrorism counterparts.

Co-operation from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, headed by Pasha ? which was accused of aiding the Taliban in the Afghan war logs published last week by WikiLeaks ? had previously been presented as being crucial to stopping numerous terrorist plots aimed against Britain.

There are fears that a long-planned visit to the UK this week by Pakistan's president, Asif Zardari, could be overshadowed by growing anger at Cameron's remarks among the one million people of Pakistani origin living in Britain. Media outlets and opposition politicians in Pakistan are urging the president to cancel the trip, while demonstrators burnt an effigy of the prime minister on the streets of Karachi.

There is particular anger, shown by Pakistanis yesterday in burning an effigy of the prime minister, that Cameron made the comments on a trip to India.

Gilani focused on the issue in today's speech in Punjab province. "In India, he [Cameron] has given a statement that we in Pakistan promote terrorism," he said. "We want to say to him, we've had good relations with you for 60 years."

He contrasted the issue raised by Cameron with the situation in Kashmir, the Himalayan region mostly held by India, which has been in open rebellion for 20 years. "In India, you [Cameron] talk about terrorism but you don't say anything about Kashmir. You forgot about the human rights abuses going on there. You should have spoken about that too, so that we in Pakistan would have been satisfied."

While Pakistan has frequently been asked to do more in the battle against extremists, Cameron's remarks are seen in Pakistan as going further than any western leader in criticising the country's record and commitment.

An editorial in Dawn, Pakistan's leading English-language daily, said: "No one, with the exception perhaps of New Delhi and Kabul, had ever accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism. In doing so, was Mr Cameron attempting to bracket Pakistan with countries that have been or still are anathema to the west?"

An officer at the ISI said: "Do you make such remarks when visiting a third country, a country we consider an enemy? It was done to appease [India]. You can sit in England and say what you want, but sitting in India gives it a completely different connotation."

A senior Pakistani civilian official said: "Cameron's remarks show a political immaturity, lack of foreign policy experience ? and talk about a choosing a bad venue to deliver the message. Being the youngest British prime minister in two centuries isn't necessarily an advantage."

The Cameron intervention came as Pakistan was reeling from the disclosures in the US intelligence documents made public by WikiLeaks. The apparent evidence of ISI collusion with the Taliban from the WikiLeaks material had already been seized on with glee by Indian officials, as confirmation of New Delhi's charge that the Pakistani state sponsors terrorism.

The shadow foreign secretary, David Miliband, said: "Diplomacy is about making friends and influencing them. Today's announcement by the ISI sadly proves that Cameron has failed to make friends and failed to influence them. We need to support Pakistan's intelligence services, not undermine them ? their work protects the people of Britain as well as the people of Pakistan. We have a strong Pakistani community in Britain and we have troops in Afghanistan ? the stakes are simply too high to go hunting headlines with thoughtless remarks.

"We need a prime minister that understands the complexity of diplomacy and so far Cameron has failed to prove himself as the standard-bearer we need around the world."

Travel expert Riaz Dooley, who has worked to encourage British Asians to take a greater interest in political life, warned that Cameron risked alienating British-Pakistanis. He said: "David Cameron is going to lose the Pakistani vote over this, because he has not apologised. It is not fair to say that Pakistan promotes the export of terrorism, he doesn't have any proof."

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood agreed that the Pakistani community in the UK was angry about Cameron's comments. He said the prime minister had failed to reflect how much the country had sacrificed in the war on terror. "They have taken a huge amount of casualties in the north-west province and there have been a huge number of bombings in Pakistan.

"They have suffered enormously in terms of their own people's lives and to suggest this counts for nothing is very, very insensitive."

Stability and an economic boom have made the president the overwhelming favourite to be re-elected next week, but the opposition has been brutally silenced

It's a hot afternoon in the southern rural district of Nyaruguru. On a dusty clearing overlooked by a hill already swarming with people, tens of thousands of supporters have been gathering since early morning to get a glimpse of their hero. Among them are peasants, pregnant women and toddlers, all wearing the red-white-and-blue T-shirts of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and dancing to the rhythm of a famous local singer, Masamba Intore. Suddenly a convoy of black cars appears in the distance. The crowd explodes in cheers of joy when a tall, slender figure slowly makes his way to the podium. Ready for another mass celebration of his uncontested rule of this small African country, the president of Rwanda and former liberation fighter, Paul Kagame, finally appears, greeting his supporters.

Triumphal rallies like this one are becoming a daily routine in the presidential campaign of the Rwandan strongman. On 9 August the RPF leader will seek another seven-year mandate in an election widely seen as a formality. With a huge budget advantage over his three opponents, Kagame is expected to win as smoothly as in 2003, when he gained more than 95% of the votes. The only female among the contestants, Alvera Mukabaramba, has already accepted the inevitable defeat. "Beating Kagame is almost impossible," she acknowledges. "He has done so well for this country, rebuilding it from scratch after putting an end to the bloodiest page in our history."

Sixteen years after the genocide, the fates of Rwanda and the RPF are still deeply connected. The party is credited with having stopped the 1994 massacres in which 800,000 Tutsi were killed by the paramilitary Hutu militias and the former Rwandan army. It has ruled the country since then, constantly strengthening its grip on the society thanks to a policy based on development, order and transparency. But a series of recent disturbing events have highlighted what the RPF might not yet be ready to promote: democracy.

In recent weeks human rights organisations have repeatedly accused the government of dirty tactics and attempts to silence the media and prevent political opponents from competing in the elections. Victoire Ingabire, a politician who recently asked for an acknowledgment of the Hutu sufferings during the genocide, is now under house arrest, charged with denialism, genocide ideology and links with the FDLR, a rebel group based in nearby Congo and made up of former génocidaire troops.

Umuseso and Umuvugizi, two of the main Rwandan tabloids, have been banned for six months for "inciting public disorder" which will prevent them from covering the elections.

At the end of June Umuvugizi's editor, Jean-Leonard Rugambage, was killed in front of his home in Kigali, the capital, by two gunmen. Rwandan general Kayumba Nyamwasa, who had fled the country after an alleged falling out with Kagame, almost succumbed to the same fate when he was shot and seriously wounded in Johannesburg.

"At the beginning we were willing to start a political process. But it seems we are now simply negotiating to save our lives," said Frank Habineza, a former member of the RPF and now the leader of the Democratic Green party of Rwanda. One of the opposition parties that have mushroomed in the past year, the Greens cannot participate properly in the August elections because of police bans on its meetings. On 14 July, the party's deputy president, André Kagwa Rwisereka, was found dead on a river bank close to the border with Burundi, his head almost completely removed from his body. According to Habineza, the two men arrested in connection with the killing were released after a few days in custody. "Kagame is a soldier who never finished the war and never gave up military methods," he says. "He sees criticism as an open threat to his rule".

While Rwandan authorities have denied any role in the killings, RPF insiders concede that the recent bans are suspicious. They might betray the worries of a party afraid to lose control of a society still deemed politically immature after the traumas of genocide. The RPF policy of cancelling Hutu and Tutsi identities and embracing everyone as a Rwandan is widely thought to be working, but will take time. "If allowed to act without restraint, people would still vote along ethnic lines and Hutus would regain power, something we are not ready to accept now," admits a local RPF member who wished to remain anonymous. "Rwandans are voting for Kagame because they don't want problems, but the society remains tense."

Loyal to its president's credo that democracy is an empty box if people are not provided with food and basic services, and conscious that a former Tutsi rebel group cannot yet have a lasting base in a country where 85% of the people are Hutu, the RPF are betting on improving the living conditions of the people, hoping that this will do enough to silence opposition inside the country.

Rwanda is certainly developing fast. "Today everyone here can enjoy free primary education and health insurance," explains Jean Paul Uwizihiwe, a GP in Kigali. "The government even subsidises free anti-retroviral medication for HIV-positive patients. This means that people who would die in almost any other African country can live a normal life."

Rwanda's economy has boomed thanks to foreign investors. Roads and new infrastructure have boosted exports and tourism, while poor rural areas have benefited from loans given to co-operatives and aid programmes including "one cow per family" .

"Efficiency and delivery" are the motto of a political party born and bred according to the military discipline of its leader. Corruption is rare and poorly performing officials are quickly removed from their offices. As a result, Rwanda is one of the few countries where the public sector is more efficient than private industry.

"As in China, democracy will come naturally with the economic empowerment of the people," explains John Rwangombwa, the minister of finance and economic planning. "Our society is still fragile. We can't allow a total freedom of expression when some politicians and part of the society are ready to use the racial card to achieve power."

According to a prominent member of the opposition who asked to remain anonymous, the RPF reasoning has a point. When asked about choosing between Kagame and Ingabire for president, he replies without hesitation. "I would choose Kagame. Ingabire is clean, but she is still supported by scary people linked to the previous regime. They have a bad agenda. They still have the old Rwandan flag in their office. I'm proud to wear the new one."

The shortcomings of the opposition are undeniable, but RPF critics still argue that the party's attitude is making things worse, preventing people from speaking about problems that are bound to resurface. For all the economic development guaranteed by the RPF, the unresolved questions of this country's troubled past still cast a shadow over the future of Rwandans. Many acknowledge that relations between Hutus and Tutsis are slowly improving but remain difficult. They can go out to drink beers and speak about women, cars and football, but some subjects remain taboo, genocide among them.

"Rwandans never tell you what is in the heart," explains Sylvestre Mupenzi, an artist. "We always say that everything is OK, but in reality we are scared and wary. We can't trust each other."

While Tutsis remain understandably bitter towards the perpetrators of genocide, Hutus think it is time to address the killings carried out against them during the civil war that followed the ethnic cleansing.

As a consequence of this endless cycle of guilt, fear and resentment, there remain two paramount needs: peace and security, things that the Kagame administration has provided. But when asked if this country may then need an "enlightened dictator" to solve its problems and continue on the road to recovery, Habineza rejects the option. "It has worked in the first years after the genocide," he admits. "But in the long run, development is not sustainable without democracy."

Security forces fear wave of terror as austerity programme provokes strikes, protests, violence ? and assassination

Greek security forces have warned of a wave of violence reminiscent of the terror that stalked Italy in the seventies after urban guerillas threatened last week to turn the country into a "war zone".

"Greece has entered a new phase of political violence by anarchist-oriented organisations that are more murderous, dangerous, capable and nihilistic than ever before," said Athanasios Drougos, a defence and counter-terrorism analyst in Athens.

"For the first time we are seeing a nexus of terrorist and criminal activity," he said. "These groups don't care about collateral damage, innocent bystanders being killed in the process. They are very extreme."

The threats came from a guerrilla group called the Sect of Revolutionaries, as it claimed credit for the murder of Sokratis Giolas, an investigative journalist. Giolas was shot dead outside his Athenian home on 19 July, in front of his pregant wife.

The gang promised to step up attacks on police, businessmen, prison guards and "corrupt" media ? and, for the first time, threatened holidaymakers.

"Tourists should learn that Greece is no longer a safe haven of capitalism," its declaration said.

"We intend to turn it into a war zone of revolutionary activity with arson, sabotage, violent demonstrations, bombings and assassinations, and not a country that is a destination for holidays and pleasure."

In an accompanying picture, the group displayed an arsenal that included AK 47 assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols and brass knuckledusters.

"Our guns are full and they are ready to speak," it said. "We are at war with your democracy."

The terror threat comes as Greek authorities endure a summer of strikes and escalating upheaval. Military trucks and petrol company vehicles were employed yesterday to alleviate a fuel shortage as more 30,000 lorry and tanker truck operators ignored a government order to return to work on pain of prosecution. Shortages were reported on many holiday islands and destinations in northern Greece where thousands of tourists are stranded.

The far more serious scourge of domestic terrorism was thought to have been eradicated in 2004, with the disbandment of the 17 November group.

Born out of the turmoil that followed the collapse of US-backed military rule, 17 November murdered the CIA station chief, Richard Welch, in 1975.

For the following 27 years it targeted Turkish envoys, juntists, US military personnel, industrialists and western diplomats, including a British military attaché in Athens, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, who was murdered in 2000.

Unlike 17 November, Greece's new generation of urban guerrillas has not tried to garner popular support.

The Sect of Revolutionaries emerged from the rioting after a teenager, Alexis Grigoropoulos, was shot dead by a policeman in December 2008. The men and women thought to comprise its closely guarded ranks are in their late twenties and thirties and appear to espouse violence almost for the sake of it.

"We don't do politics, we do guerilla warfare," its members announced in the proclamation placed on the boy's grave within hours of their first attack, on a police station, in February 2009. Two weeks later they sprayed the offices of a private television station with bullets. Three months after that, they claimed their first victim, Nectarios Savvas, a police officer protecting a state witness. Six people have died in separate attacks this year.

Last month another group, yet to be named, sent a parcel bomb wrapped up as a gift to the office of Michalis Chrysohoidis, the minister in charge of public security. It killed his chief aide.

The surge in violence comes amid rising social tensions over the austerity measures enforced by the government in exchange for ?110bn in emergency aid, the biggest bailout in history.

Mounting social unrest, waning support for political parties and record levels of unemployment among an increasingly radicalised youth are believed to have augmented the ranks of anti-establishment groups.

"The economic crisis has most definitely played a role in aggravating the violence," Chrysohoidis told the Observer. "And the violence we are seeing is worst than ever before because society as a whole is more violent than ever before."

To date Chrysohoidis, who oversaw the break-up of 17 November during a previous stint in the same post, has ordered police to tread a fine line.

But anger is growing. Security officials say it is only a matter of time before one of the three groups currently active in Greece strikes again.

More worrying, they say, are their connections to the Balkan criminal underworld that has made access to weapons dangerously easy.

"In other European countries, home-grown terrorism has been on the decrease for years," said Drougos. "But in Greece the situation is not unlike pre-Bolshevik revolutionary Russia or Italy at the start of the terror campaign by the Red Brigades? it's very unpredictable and tourists should be vigilant."

All of my friends have better enemies than I do. One friend calls to lament her arrogant boss. Another friend calls to complain about her boyfriend's meddling ex-girlfriend. Another friend calls to lament that her mother-in-law has gone too far this time.

Back when three TV networks served all of America, people shared the same heroes, the same dreams and the same golden palomino named Trigger. But earlier this month Roy Rogers' faithful sidekick was Lot 38 at Christie's Auction House in Rockefeller Center, the chance of a lifetime for any buckaroo with a spare $200,000 or so. "I'd have to do another 200 root canals to afford Trigger," said Douglas King, a Manhattan dentist in a 10-gallon hat decorated with grouse feathers and a gaping rattlesnake head.

A second House Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, could face an ethics trial this fall, further complicating the election outlook for the party as it battles to retain its majority.

The case of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and the massage therapist has been closed.

It's not as if Oliver Stone has been dazzling us with his sense of decorum and totally rational behavior all these years. The man who once signed a letter comparing Germany's treatment of Scientologists to its treatment of Jews? The world's leading JFK assassination conspiracy theorist? Frankly we could just stop at "the guy who based 'Scarface' on his own experiences with coke." (Seriously. Have you seen "Scarface"?) But this week, the critically acclaimed Oscar winner really jumped the crazy shark.

View the slide show

To say that Ron Galella provokes strong reactions is putting it too mildly. Significant chunks of Leon Gast's highly entertaining and skillful documentary "Smash His Camera" consist of lawyers or journalists or Galella's fellow photographers sitting around and arguing about whether the rumpled "paparazzo superstar" of the 1970s (his term) is bottom-feeding scum or a legitimate servant of the public interest or, God help us, even an artist.

If you're looking for a celebration of sophisticated humor you've come to the wrong place. The films on this list do not inspire knowing chuckles or raised eyebrows. They aim lower than that -- much lower. They aren't refined or even especially subtle. Good thing, too: Sometimes the funniest movies are the ones that have zero interest in being respectable -- comedies where you spent most of the film's running time laughing at the characters rather than with them, reveling in their misfortunes and delusions and sheer thickheadedness. (For a recent, if more heartfelt, example, check out this weekend's "Dinner for Schmucks.")

Serves 2-4, depending on how serious you are about tomatoes

When I first heard about eating seasonally and locally, I thought it was great idea -- in the same way that I thought trying yoga and getting around to opening a retirement account and settling down with a nice Jewish girl sound like great ideas. Fabulous, really, excellent and ... I'll get around to it.

This evening's Rescue Rangers are mem from somerville, grog, rexymeteorite, claude, shayera, and vcmvo2, with watercarrier4diogenes at the wheel of the Editmobile, careening through the streets trying to keep up with Lisbeth Salander

Tonight's diaries travel from analysis of our tragically not-wonderful 'traditional media' (™Kos) to the dreams and needs of our entire planet's most important resource, its children, with a couple of stops along the way that are important in their own right.

• alpolitics reminds us that it's not just what we see, but also what we don't see in the media that should concern us with It's Not Just Faux News That We Should Be Worried About. (mem from somerville)
• danps concludes that lies and propaganda, not the advent of the internet, made the traditional media irrelevant in The Problem Isn't Fast News, It's Dumb News. (rexymeteorite)
• Is the Media putting Gulf oil disaster to bed? slksfca perceives a disturbing trend in media reportage. (claude)
• kyledeb summarizes the recent activities and offers guidance on the direction forward in DREAM Now Letters Recap: The CHC Has To Stand With Migrant Youth, Not Against Us. (mem from somerville)
• In What Would Gandhi Do?, Mokurai recounts a discussion over the benefits of OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) as it arose over India's efforts in this direction. (claude)
• Renee writes an important diary on Stopping Rape. (vcmvo2)
• Chico David RN has a strong personal reaction on a visit to an important site in labor history in Alone at Ludlow. (mem from somerville)

jotter once again astounds us with his statistical (NO, NOT 'sadistical!, no matter how hard it is for you to understand it 8^) ) High Impact Diaries: July 30, 2010 and carolita follows with a mesmerizing Top Comments 7-31-10 – Dr. Angel Edition.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread (even if you're the author! Here's where that's actually appreciated). And, of course, since it's an open thread, PLAY NICE, OK? 8^)

Wait, let me dig through the drawer. I know I have it someplace. Here it is in nice bold letters -- my degree in aquatic biology. Yeah, that's right, I've always loved the sea. Loved the salt spray in my face and the song of the whales and the... what's that? That little word after aquatic biology? Don't pay attention to that. Not important. Back to those whales, you know when I was studying, I... I don't know what you mean, there's nothing important there. Sheesh, okay. So it says "Aquatic Biology (nonmarine)."

As it happens I earned my degree from Murray State University, which has a very nice station on Kentucky Lake, but is about as far from salt water as you can be in this country. Of course, that's not strictly true. You could be in St. Louis, where I moved after college, and where I've been parked for the last three decades. So the truth is I am not, nor have I ever been an expert on anything about the sea. I've never studied whales, or sharks, or coral reefs. Never crewed a tall ship. Or short ship. The truth is, I've never even tested my mettle at the helm of a Sunfish skimming across a pond on a windy day.

Except in my dreams.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester

Watching this gangly kid getting rowed out to his ship you can see right away that he's a poor fit for the world he's entering. He's too old to be a midshipman. Completely out of his element. Heck, he even gets seasick while the ship is still at anchor. But give him another twenty pages and you'll see why he's going to make it -- and why Horatio Hornblower has been popular since 1937. It's not that he's the most daring man in the Navy. Instead, Hornbower is reserved and thoughtful. He's the guy who is quietly one step ahead of everyone else in his thinking -- and ready to act not out of raw courage, but from a necessity that no one else has yet put together. This book was not the first written. The series actually started with Hornblower already a captain. It was over a decade later that Forester went back to create this tale of Hornblower's first days in the service (don't bother trying to put all the books in sequence, I'll tell you that there are gaps, overlaps, and contradictions). There are also some flaws in Forester's presentation of the British Navy during the Napoleonic era. But who cares. The emphasis here is on story and character -- which is what I want from a book. For me, this is Hornblower at his best. As he progresses through the ranks, his opinions become more fixed, his attitude more blunt. In this book, Hornblower is still raw enough to make plenty of mistakes -- and sharp enough to learn from them.

HMS Suprise by Patrick O'Brian

Frankly, I don't like Jack Aubrey, the captain of O'Brian's long running sea series. I think Aubrey is an ass at the outset, and just as big an ass in the final book. I don't mind a book with a flawed main character, but Aubrey is someone I'd rather punch than follow, no matter how many victories he runs up at sea. So when I tell you I still read all the books in the series, you'll understand that despite my problems with Lucky Jack, there has to be something here that kept me coming back. In the case of O'Brian that something is authenticity. The ships, the situations, the actions at sea and the political wrangling on shore all show the peerless job the author did in recreating this world. I won't kid you -- I'm a Hornblower fan to the end, but when I need something of this period for my own work, I don't hesitate to treat O'Brian's work with the authority I'd give an encyclopedia.

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
When I saw the previews for the first Pirates of the Caribbean, I was convinced that someone was making a film from this book. As it turns out, that will be Pirates movie #4. However the film turns out, the book is a series of adventures on sea and on land that are both colorful and chilling. Powers' premise is magic is destroyed by iron. In Europe, where iron making has gone on for millennia, the last bits of magic are all but gone. But in the Caribbean and along the wild costs of America, the world is very, very strange indeed. The story moves from piracy on the seas to a bizarre trek through Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth, and the action through the whole book is enough to remind you of a deck pitching in a storm.

Midshipman's Hope by David Feintuch
Finally, how about a sea story in which there is no sea? The UNS Hibernia is not an ocean-going vessel, instead it's a massive starship delivering colonists to a planet in a voyage that takes over a year. For Midshipman Nicholas Seafort, the early part of the journey is about learning his place on board the ship -- a ship whose social structure is very consciously modeled after the British Navy of Hornblower and Aubrey. Seafort takes his lumps (literally) in the wardroom, and has barely begun his career when a devastating accident takes out a good portion of those on board the Hibernia, including all of the ship's senior officers. Left to command a damaged ship filled with hundreds of terrified passengers, Seafort faces tough decisions if there is any chance of bringing Hibernia to the end of its journey. Feintuch clearly modeled not just his space navy, but the structure of his book on Hornblower's adventures, and at times it has feel of a set of connected shorts rather than a satisfying whole. But overall this is a romp with enough mutiny and mayhem to satisfy any old salt.

Why would anyone want to burn a book? Especially a book considered holy by over a billion people. Just when you thought the American Taliban couldn't go any lower, they did:

In protest of what it calls a religion "of the devil," a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an "International Burn a Quran Day" on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The Dove World Outreach Center says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website and Facebook page, it invites Christians to burn the Muslim holy book at the church from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

"We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times," Pastor Terry Jones told CNN's Rick Sanchez earlier this week.

It's astonishing that there are people in America who are so far gone in their islamophobia that they actually would celebrate 9/11 with a book burning.

There is no question there is the direct intention to be confrontational. Pastor Jones is honest about his hatred for Muslims. And, let's be clear, he has the Constitutional right to burn books as a way of making a political statement. What, however, does it say about the character of people who feel that the best way to express their views is the stamping out of all conflicting views?

Burning the Quran isn't going to persuade anybody and will most surely offend a great deal of people in this country and around the world. It certainly won't be a shining example of the central point of Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount:

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Luke 6:31

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yet intellectual property is very different from real property, because it is useless if you keep it to yourself, and an abstract concept can be infinitely shared. These features create an apparent dilemma for those who would encourage inventors. People get rich by selling each other things (and services), not ideas. Manufacture the best bicycles, and you profit handsomely; come up with the idea of the bicycle, and you get nothing because it is soon copied. If innovators are people who make ideas, rather than things, how can they profit from them? Does society need to invent a special mechanism to surround new ideas with fences, to make them more like houses and fields?

There is little evidence that patents really drive inventors to invent. In the second half of the 19th century, neither Holland nor Switzerland had a patent system, yet both countries flourished and attracted inventors. The list of significant 20th-century inventions that were never patented includes the automatic transmission, Bakelite, ballpoint pens, cellophane, cyclotrons, gyrocompasses, jet engines, magnetic recording, power steering, safety razors, and zippers. By contrast, the Wright brothers effectively grounded the nascent aircraft industry in the United States by enthusiastically defending their 1906 patent on powered flying machines.

The secret of the modern world is its gigantic interconnectedness. Ideas are having sex with other ideas from all over the planet with ever-increasing promiscuity. The telephone had sex with the computer and spawned the Internet.

Technologies emerge from the coming together of existing technologies into wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. Henry Ford once candidly admitted that he had invented nothing new: He had "simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work." Inventors like to deny their ancestors, exaggerating the unfathered nature of their breakthroughs, the better to claim the full glory (and sometimes the patents) for themselves. Thus, Americans learn that Edison invented the incandescent light bulb out of thin air, when his less commercially-slick forerunners, Joseph Swan in Britain and Alexander Lodygin in Russia, deserve at least to share the credit.

As I've reported in this blog before I have had a very long one-sided relationship with the people who watch my newscasts. I talk, they listen. If they had something to say to me they yelled it at the TV screen like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Twitter changed all that. I can now hear you and I can now answer you...

I can't speak for the dozens of people who check in regularly every night... sometimes at 6 or 7:00.. but mostly 11:00. I don't know exactly what they get out of it except a kind of cool experience of actually conversing in real time with the guy on TV. But I can tell you what I get out of it. For the first time in years I actually feel like I'm talking to someone rather than at them. Frankly it's energizing!

It was all a bit silly sure, but I realized something else was going on. The audience of our 11:00 newscast wasn't just talking to me... they were talking to each other! I felt like Alexander Graham Bell when he made his first call to Watson. The backchannel worked!

This "digital transmission right" would be a new right, not an additional right. It would replace the parties' now-existing reproduction, public performance and distribution rights (and, where applicable, the making available right and the right of communication to the public). These would no longer have separate or independent existence for purposes of digital transmissions of sound recordings or the musical works embodied in them.

The only act that would require a license, or payment of a license fee, would be the digital transmission of recorded music. Every transmission that is not subject to exemption would require authorization. This does not mean that separate payment would be due for each transmission of each recording; only that, regardless how license fees may be calculated, all non-exempt transmissions would require authorization.

Licenses would be made available unconstrained by the concerns that have driven the industry's failed campaign to salvage its sales-based revenue model. The determinative consideration would be whether or not recordings had been digitally transmitted, not whether transmissions result in sales, promote sales, or cause sales of recordings to be lost.

Licenses would be issued without regard to whether recordings are streamed, downloaded, or transmitted by some means not yet devised; whether music programming is interactive or non-interactive, or contains this, that or another recording; whether the service accepts user-generated content, operates as a P2P or social network, or otherwise retransmits or further transmits recordings that originate from other sites or services. The number of copies necessary to effect transmissions and the type of transmission technology used would not affect the availability of a license.

Personally I find these kinds of plans to be dangerous as they promote the idea that there is some kind of a "solution" that allows content creators to retain control over digital files as they propagate across the internet. These are not solutions, they are handwaving to obscure the fact that the economy has changed so that absolute control over content is neither possible nor necessary. The voluntary aspect of licensing promotes the idea that negotiating uses and fees with rights-holders is somehow the "morally correct" way to proceed, never once considering the idea that our culture may have moved beyond that construct.

Conferences and seminars, both past (SIGGRAPH, FISL, JVM Summit'10) and upcoming (JavaOne, Java Power Tools Bootcamps), took center stage on java.net this past week. Other topics receiving considerable coverage included JavaEE / GlassFish and Java tools.

If you didn't get a chance to visit java.net on a daily basis in the past week, read on, and you'll find all of the week's Java Today news items, a selection of java.net blog posts, and the old and new java.net spotlights and polls.

This week's index:

• Conferences, JUG Meetings, Seminars, etc. (10 items)
• JavaEE, GlassFish (5 items)
• Tools, IDEs, etc. (6 items)
• Platforms, Frameworks (2 items)
• JDK, JVM, JSRs (2 items)
• Programming (1 item)
• Mobile (2 items)
• Open Source Projects (2 items)
• Miscellaneous (1 item)

Conferences, JUG Meetings, Seminars, etc.

Dustin Marx considered How Much Time to Spend on JavaFX at JavaOne 2010?

For any conference that one attends, one of the difficult decisions is which presentations to attend. This is particularly problematic when there are some really interesting-sounding presentations held during the same hour. I find that I often change my plans for which presentations to see based on earlier presentations in the same conference. A presentation (often an opening keynote) may stir my interest in a topic I had entered the conference not knowing or not caring much about. On the other hand, an early presentation could equally dissuade me from attending further presentations on the same topic because I may realize that the subject is not as relevant to me as I thought it would be. I am already struggling with this for JavaOne 2010, particularly when it comes to JavaFX presentations...

Dustin also posted a lament, JavaOne 2010: So Many Interesting Sessions, So Few Time Slots -

JavaOne 2010 has so many presentations that I want to see that even my current alternatives list ("My Interests" in Schedule Builder) is full of presentations that sound compelling. The following presentations are currently in "My Interests" because I have (as of today) selected another presentation at the same time to "Enroll" in. I think this list speaks for itself. Of course, it is likely that I will change my mind several times between now and JavaOne and it's almost certain that I'll attend some of these. For now, though, these are the presentations I wish I could attend, but currently think I'll have to miss because there's something else also scheduled at the same time...

Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart provided JavaOne News Update 1:

An update on some recent News on JavaOne 2010. As you know JavaOne San Francisco is Sep 19-23, 2010. The Official page has links to the Registration Page and the Online Catalog. News updates include: • A surprisingly useful & manageable Catalog-as-tweets via @javaoneconf; • Availability of Schedule Builder (post); • Open enrollment in Java University (post)...

James Gosling was Hanging out at SIGGRAPH:

I'm spending this week hanging out at my favorite Geek+Artist Fest: SIGGRAPH. The folks from Weta did a great presentation today on the work they did on Avatar. Between their fascinating simulation of muscle dynamics for accurate skin deformations, the many ways they used deep alpha maps & abused the immense size of their disk farm, to the studly tricks they did with spherical harmonics to fake out global illumination...

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine got Back from FISL:

So I'm back from FISL and I have to say I wasn't disappointed. For people that have attended both FISL and OSCON these two conferences seem to have a lot in common. FISL had somewhere between 4000 and 5000 attendees interested in many different OSS topics which means it's quite different from your typical Java conference (lots of python, multimedia, security, linux desktops, etc.)...

Arun Gupta posted his FISL 2010 Trip Report:

4998 attendees registered and participated at the 11th edition of FISL - the biggest open source conference in Brazil. This was my second year at FISL. Even though the attendance was slightly down from last year but there was no let down in the energy. With 13 parallel tracks and sessions running from 9am to 11pm, it can be absolutely overwhelming. However most of the sessions were in Portuguese (with no English translation) so I could not attend. I presented on the Java EE 6 Toolshow to an audience of approx 200...

The JavaOne Conference Blog announced that JavaOne Early Bird Ends July 30! Really:

YGTBHA: You're Going to Be Here Anyway. You want to see and learn about the newest products and meet experts and business leaders. You want to save money and get a big discount for registering early. You only have one more day before the extended early bird deadline runs out on July 30. It's only logical. Do it. Last chance for the early bird discount. Really. Register Now!

John Ferguson Smart invites people to Come learn to kick-butt in Java Build Automation, Automated Testing, Code Quality, CI and more!

Maven 3, Selenium 2/WebDriver, easyb, Hudson, and more! The next sessions of the Java Power Tools Bootcamps are coming up soon in Wellington, London, and Canberra. Don't miss out on this great opportunity to learn some very useful and very cool skills and best practices in the areas of build automation, code quality, automated testing and continuous integration. This is always a popular course,...

I passed on the news about the Oracle Video Challenge: an Opportunity to Attend JavaOne for Free!

The Oracle Video Challenge, which started yesterday and runs through August 9, will provide three winning contestants with a free Oracle OpenWorld or JavaOne and Oracle Develop full conference pass...

Remi Forax posted JVM Summit'10:

JVM Summit'10 presentations are already available.

JavaEE, GlassFish

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine discussed Module initialization order in Java EE 6:

One of the new features in the umbrella Java EE 6 specification is the ability to define the order in which modules (web applications for instance) from a given Java EE application are initialized by the container. This might be useful if you want for example a given module to serve as resource initializer to create a database table before any other module can be accessed (note this does not apply to application client modules). Previously, the order in which Java EE application modules were initialized...

Alexis also talked about Servlet 3.0, fragments and web.xml to rule them all:

Servlet 3.0 has some very nice ease-of-development features in the form of new annotations (such as @WebServlet) and some useful extensibility features with web-fragments (details here) and ServletContainerInitializer which all contribute to make web.xml optional. While this is a great step towards more modular applications and an overall development simplification, you may want to have more control over what's being deployed in your production system. This is what metadata-complete helps you achieve...

Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart talked about Closed Networks and the GlassFish Update Center:

One of the best features about all the versions of GlassFish 3 is how easy it is to update it through the IPS-based Update Center. The same GUI and CLI tools can be used to upgrade from 3.0 to 3.0.1, to Add or Remove components and to switch from the Open Source to the Oracle's Commercial release...

Arun Gupta provided QA#4: Java EE 6: Developers focus on business logic, Much lower TCO - by Johan Vos:

Jigsaw puzzle, modular, standard, integrated specifications, simple, annotation-driven, standards compliance, vendor independence, and light-weight deployment are some of the benefits highlighted by the Java EE 6 community...

Bhakti Mehta talked about Deploying webservices on Glassfish 3.1 cluster:

The following blog shows how to deploy webservices on a 2 instance cluster using glassfish 3.1 .

Tools, IDEs, etc.

Andrew Bayer discussed Continuous Deployment, Code Review and Pre-Tested Commits on Digg4:

One of the exciting things, from a development perspective, about Digg4 is continuous deployment - when developers fix a bug or add a new feature, there's no need to wait for a scheduled release. Instead, the change can go live right away. This is great - the turnaround time for a change drops dramatically. But this also opens up the possibility of broken changes going live, since there won't be manual testing and signoffs before the changes go live. Figuring out how to balance the speed and agility of continuous deployment with the requirements for stability and reliability has been, and continues to be, a major challenge for us here...

Geertjan Wielenga was working on Extending IntelliJ IDEA for NetBeans Platform Development:

My article Using IntelliJ IDEA for NetBeans Platform Development is still valid and provides a viable approach to creating NetBeans Platform applications in IntelliJ IDEA. However, this would obviously be a lot better...

Geertjan also offered the IntelliJ team Thanks for Open Sourcing IntelliJ IDEA:

Thanks for Open Sourcing IntelliJ IDEA. It's come in really handy now that I'm creating facets for the NetBeans Platform and NetBeans modules (at some point, for OSGi bundles too, I think). Here you can learn how to create Facets, simply by reading the facet for Groovy. Without the Groovy facet, I would have been totally lost...

Hudson Labs announced Hudson 1.368 Released!

Regular readers will recognize that I've been slacking off quite a bit lately with my release announcements, my apologies. With the release of 1.368 on Sunday, which fixed a few fairly important bugs, I figured I'd dusty off my blogging fedora and give this a shot. This release has three bug fixes in it which were causing some issues for some users, particularly those deploying Hudson inside the recently released Tomcat 7.0 (see issue 6738)...

Fabrizio Giudici posted Maven is good, but needs some love:

You know that I've moved to Maven more than one year ago and I don't regret. I think I would be unable to manage the number of projects I'm managing on my own without it (or at least without an effective artifact repository). But Maven needs a proper and clean environment. Maven experts are constantly advising about that. One of the most important pieces of the environment is the artifact...

This week's new java.net Spotlight is JFrog's To Build or Not to Be - Seminar Videos:

JFrog's Continuous Integration and Build Seminar "To Build or Not to Be", took place on July 1st, 2010 and was a big success. The sessions of Kohsuke Kawaguchi creator of Hudson and CEO of InfraDNA, and Hans Dockter creator of Gradle and CEO of Gradle Inc are now available online. Watch now the videos of "Gradle - A Better Way To Build" and "Doing More with Hudson". Enjoy!

Platforms, Frameworks

Jan Haderka announced that SwingX 1.6.1 is in central maven repo:

As Karl mentioned already in his blog, SwingX 1.6.1 was released few weeks ago. There were some issues uploading the artifacts to central repo this time, due to previous nexus migration and changes in structure of repositories, but all is solved now. To use 1.6.1 simply update your pom to...

Jan also announced SwingX going Maven ... maybe:

I've just committed mavenized version of swingx under the swingx-r3734-mavenized branch. If you know nothing about maven here's the basic: download and install (unzip) maven from http://maven.apache.org you should not need to configure anything apart from geting maven/bin on your path so you can run maven to build swingx you need to run "mvn install" or ...

JDK, JVM, JSRs

Last week's java.net Spotlight was the Oracle Technology Network's latest TechCast Live: Toward a Universal VM, Episode 11:

TechCast host Justin Kestelyn interviews Oracle's Alex Buckley, who explains why the JVM has been good not only for Java, but also for other languages -- and why JSR 292 will have a major impact on developers.

This past week's java.net poll asked What impact do you expect JSR 292 (invokedynamic) to have long term? A total of 239 votes were cast, with the following results:

• 26% (62 votes) - Enormous: it provides critical functionality we've needed for a long time
• 30% (71 votes) - It's an important, but not earth-shattering, enhancement
• 18% (44 votes) - Let's wait and see
• 7% (16 votes) - Minimal
• 18% (43 votes) - I don't know
• 1% (3 votes) - Other

Programming

On DeveloperWorks, Ted Neward highlighted 5 things you didn't know about ... the Java Scripting API:

Many Java developers today are interested in using scripting languages on the Java platform, but using a dynamic language that has been compiled into Java bytecode isn't always possible. In some cases, it's quicker and more efficient to simply script parts of a Java application or to call the particular Java objects you need from within a script...

Mobile

Terrence Barr reported Just in: Unlocking and jailbraking phones now legal in the U.S.:

This decision just in: The U.S. Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, has just announced new rules that effectively legitimize unlocking and jailbreaking of phones. This is significant, because the ruling states that owners of phones actually do own the phone, rather than just being a licensee of the manufacturer, and thus are allowed to circumvent controls that the manufacturer put in place to limit what is considered fair use of the device.

Shai Almog was Sliding It Back To My First Post in his latest LWUIT post:

My very first post in this blog (May 2008) was about creating a progress indicator component. At the time LWUIT only had one style per component and the post was mostly about threading in LWUIT. Over that time we considered adding a progress indicator component frequently but had a very difficult issue with its customization. How can we create a component which is both powerful enough for general usage and not too restricted for the various use cases...

Open Source Projects

Kirill Grouchnikov published Release candidates for Trident, Flamingo and Substance:

I’ve just published the release candidates for the following projects: * Trident 1.3 (code-named Diamond In The Sky); * Flamingo 5.0 (code-named Imogene); * Substance 6.1 (code-named Trinidad); * Substance Flamingo plugin 6.1 ...

Java.net's Cajo Project announced the latest cajo SDK release:

The cajo project has released a small (110kB) SDK for developing distributed Java RIAs quickly and easily. The SDK handles the display and distribution tasks behind the scenes, with virtually no source impact. Ordinary Swing user interfaces are rendered full-frame in browsers as Applets, and via WebStart, automatically. Application objects can be distributed transparently over multiple JVMs to improve performance, reliability, and scalability.

Miscellaneous

This week's new java.net poll, which was suggested by Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, is intended to assist java.net with future planning. The poll asks Which of the following describes your java.net user account(s) and account-related email addresses? The poll will be open for the next week.

Subscriptions and Archives: You can subscribe to this blog using the java.net Editor's Blog Feed. You can also subscribe to the Java Today RSS feed and the java.net blogs feed. You can find historical archives of what has appeared the front page of java.net in the java.net home page archive.

-- Kevin Farnham
Twitter: @kevin_farnham

Byron Nevins has posted a very nice blog on offline configuration for Glassfish v3.1 here.

The following blog will show how to deploy a webservices application to a Glassfish 3.1 cluster . You can do additional tasks using the Glassfish Administration Console.

For this blog I tried with the latest promoted b13 of Glassfish 3.1 available here.

Steps

1.Install Glassfish b13 on both machines (jwsdp and adc2180404)

2.DAS  is on adc2180404 other instance is on jwsdp

3.asadmin start-domain
Waiting for the server to start .....
Successfully started the domain : domain1
domain location: /scratch/bhamehta/gf-install/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1
Log File: /scratch/bhamehta/gf-install/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/logs/server.log
Admin Port: 4848
Command start-domain executed successfully.

4.asadmin create-cluster mycluster

Command create-cluster executed successfully.

5. asadmin create-node-config --nodehost jwsdp jwsdpconf

Command create-node-config executed successfully.

6.asadmin create-instance --cluster mycluster    --node jwsdpconf mycluster_i1

Successfully created instance mycluster_i1 in the DAS configuration, but failed to create the instance files. Please run:

asadmin --host adc2180404.us.oracle.com --port 4848 create-local-instance --node jwsdpconf mycluster_i1

on jwsdp to complete the transaction.

Command create-instance failed.
 

7(On jwsdp)asadmin --host adc2180404.us.oracle.com --port 4848 create-local-instance --node jwsdpconf mycluster_i1

Attempting to rendezvous with DAS on host adc2180404.us.oracle.com port 4848
Uptime: 1 minutes, 58 seconds

The instance has rendezvoused with the DAS and will be using host adc2180404.us.oracle.com port 4848 for future communication.
servers.server.mycluster_i1.config-ref=mycluster-config
servers.server.mycluster_i1.lb-weight=100
servers.server.mycluster_i1.name=mycluster_i1
servers.server.mycluster_i1.node=jwsdpconf

servers.server.mycluster_i1.property.rendezvousOccurred=true

Command create-local-instance executed successfully.

8(On jwsdp)./asadmin start-local-instance mycluster_i1

Waiting for the server to start ............
Successfully started the instance: mycluster_i1
instancelocation: /Users/bhakti/gf-install/glassfishv3/glassfish/nodeagents/jwsdpconf/mycluster_i1
Log File: /Users/bhakti/gf-install/glassfishv3/glassfish/nodeagents/jwsdpconf/mycluster_i1/logs/server.log
Admin Port: 24848

Command start-local-instance executed successfully. 

 Now deploy a webservice I tried deploying the war which we developed as part of this blog http://weblogs.java.net/blog/bhaktimehta/archive/2010/06/24/ejb-webservi... and could access the wsdl from the instance.

9.(on adc180404 DAS) asadmin deploy  --target mycluster /scratch/bhamehta/ejbwsinwar.war

The application should be deployed on the instance. You can test it using the tester. In my case the machine on which the instance was running was jwsdp

I tried deploying the war which we developed as part of this blog http://weblogs.java.net/blog/bhaktimehta/archive/2010/06/24/ejb-webservi... and could access the wsdl from the instance.

http://jwsdp:28080/WeatherService/Weather?wsdl

To deploy on the das you will need to create an application ref like this

10./asadmin create-application-ref ejbwsinwar

Now you can access the wsdl on the DAS too http://localhost:8080/WeatherService/Weather?wsdl

You can also launch the Glassfish Admin Console on the DAS (Note admin console will not be available on the instances)

in my case we launch the Glassfish Administration console on this location http://adc2180404:4848/

The following image shows a snapshot of the Glassfish Administration Console

Under the applications tab you can see the ejbwsinwar .

 You can also click on Common Tasks and List the deployed applications, deploy applications, manage the targets etc.

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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Tenth Annual Debian Developer Conference about to start
July 30th, 2010 http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100730
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Tenth Annual Debian Developer Conference about to start

The Debian Project, the team behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system, would like to invite you to participate in the upcoming Debian Conference which will take place from August 1 to 7, 2010, at New York City's Columbia University in cooperation with the Columbia Computer Science department. This year's conference is the first DebConf to be held in the United States in the 11-year history of the event. This year, more than 300 developers from all over the world, including Brazil, Argentina, Bosnia, Mexico, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Venezuela, and Latvia, will participate.

read more

Ruby on Rails, a popular Web development framework based on the Ruby programming language, makes it easy to access your database, but it does not always do so efficiently. Learn more about common performance problems with Rails, including N+1 query, and discover how you can fix them.

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